While the battle for the compensation of Thalidomide victims was raging in the 1970s, former Labour MP Jack Ashley asked in a parliamentary debate how Louise, then 11 years old, could look forward to 'laughing and loving with no hand to hold and no legs to dance on'.Louise was born Louise Mason, a victim of the devastating drug Thalidomide. Born without arms and legs, she is the daughter of David...
Most children at the tender age of six or so are generally full of the most impractical schemes for becoming policemen, firemen or engine drivers when they grow up… I knew exactly what I was going to do: I was going to have my own zoo… Menagerie Manor is the hugely entertaining account of how the wellknown and much-loved conservationist and author, Gerald Durrell, fulfilled a lifelong ambition by founding...
On this speck of volcanic soil in the middle of a vast sea, a complete, unique and peaceful world was created slowly and carefully. It waited there for hundreds of thousands of years for an annihilating invasion of voracious animals for which it was totally unprepared, a cohort of rapacious beasts led by the worst predator in the world, Homo sapiens… In an incredibly short space of time, a number of...
The behaviour of a Siamese cat is never predictable, as all owners well know. The calm of the Tovey household is once again torn to shreds when Doreen’s cat Seeley instantly loathes the new arrival, Shebalu, and she – all five inches of her – loathes him back.
And then, even worse, they become firm friends, and team up to create havoc.
The characters of Cats in the Belfry return with a vengeance:...
It wasn’t that Sugieh was particularly wicked. It was just that she was a Siamese.’ Animal lovers Doreen Tovey and her husband acquire their first Siamese kitten to rid themselves of an invasion of mice. But Sugieh is not just any cat. She’s an actress, a prima donna, an iron hand in a delicate, blue-pointed glove. Sugieh quickly establishes herself as queen of the house. First published over forty...
All our animals showed their independence at a dishearteningly early age.’ The Toveys attempt to settle down to a quiet life in the country. Unfortunately for them, however, their tyrannical Siamese cats have other ideas. From causing an uproar on the BBC to staying out all night and claiming to have been kidnapped, Sheba and Solomon’s outrageous behaviour leaves the Toveys at their wits end. Meanwhile...
‘So there we were, driving along with an earth-box, a bag of turkey and, squalling his head off on my knee in Sheba’s basket, the new boy.’ The Toveys are no strangers to disaster, particularly the Siamese-related kind, but when their beloved Solomon dies unexpectedly, they’re faced with a completely new type of problem – do they find another cat to replace the one they’ve lost? The animals always...
But why did it have to happen to us? Because he was a Siamese, of course, with his own ideas on things…
Doreen Tovey enchants us again with stories of life with her husband Charles in a West Country village, where they are driven to distraction by Siamese cats, Annabel the donkey, nesting swallows, bucking horses, and the villagers who still regard them as inept townsfolk, even after 18 years.
In...
The story of Athol Oakley, one of the greatest wrestlers of our time, and the bloody world of wrestling in the early 1900s. Athol worked himself up from a five stone teenager to a 15 stone world wrestling champion, fighting in thousands of bouts around the world.
zasmakuj przyszłości
